My attitude of astonishment was my sole reply.
She smiled, the lovely red lips parting over her mother-of-pearl teeth most enchantingly. Then she murmured in explanation—
“See how I am dressed. This was my burial attire. Regard it. In my first lifetime one dressed in wool and silk. In returning to the earth I thought that such things would have passed away even from the memory of man. I imagined that after so many years that the human race would have discovered fabrics to dress in more wonderful than a tissue of sun and silk, more pleasurable to touch than the exquisite tender skin of young virgins, of rose-leaves, of downy peaches. But you still dress or clothe yourselves in thread, in wool, in the silk we all had of old. Then look at my shoes of olive morocco, worked with gold like the binding of a rare book. Have you as lovely things for the feet in these days? And so with the gems and jewels of these days. I knew them all, then.”
“Callisto,” at last I said, “you give these things too great an importance. A girl is never so beautiful as when she is made as the gods made her.”
She gazed at me, then said very slowly, “Are you sure now that women themselves, their form, has not changed since my early days of life?”
CHAPTER II
To my utter amazement she followed her last words by slipping off her jewels and robes. She had the grandeur of a goddess from throat to feet. She curved into a long, deep, easy chair, and said, “Why have you people of to-day not perfected the woman as you have perfected flowers?” She continued in a soft, dreamy voice, “Oh, days of the youth of the world, days of the first coming of pleasure!... During the nineteen hundred years of my sleep in the grave what new joy have you all discovered. What new pleasure have you found? Invite me to share it with you....”
“We need more time, Callisto,” I pleaded.